page_title: Lehigh and Hudson River Railway
section_title: Bankruptcy
hierarchical_section_title: Lehigh and Hudson River Railway / Bankruptcy
caption_attribution_description: English: Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad bridge crossing over the Lehigh and Hudson River Railway near Tranquility, New Jersey.
context_page_description: The Lehigh and Hudson River Railway was the smallest of the six railroads that were merged into Conrail in 1976. It was a bridge line running northeast–southwest across northwestern New Jersey, connecting the line to the Poughkeepsie Bridge at Maybrook, New York with Easton, Pennsylvania, where it interchanged with various other companies.
context_section_description: The L&HR filed for Chapter 77 bankruptcy on April 19, 1972, partly due to Penn Central's decision to operate over other routes in order to avoid the aging Poughkeepsie Bridge.
  Post-bankruptcy, the L&HR continued to operate a nocturnal daily freight. During the mid-1970s, the L&HR became part of a proposal to run "Bunny Ski Trains" between Hoboken, New Jersey, and the Playboy Resort (Great Gorge) in Vernon, New Jersey. The proposed service, which would have run on weekends during the winter, would have retrieved passengers westbound along the Erie Lackawanna Railway's (EL) Morristown Line to Netcong, New Jersey, then run along a short section of the remaining Sussex Branch to Andover Junction in Andover, New Jersey, and then northbound along the L&HR to the Playboy Club. The service would have utilized EL's new commuter consists, but was met with stiff opposition from EL management, which was anticipating a merger with other northeastern US railroads and did not want to enter into a venture that it viewed as a potential money-loser. The Bunny Ski Train remained a viable proposal until the remaining vestige of the Sussex Branch was removed in July 1977, after it became clear that it was no longer needed as a connector to the L&HR.
  As such, in 1976 the L&HR was merged into Conrail. Subsequently, the section between Belvidere, New Jersey and Sparta, New Jersey (Sparta Junction) was abandoned. The tracks, however, remained in place until approximately 1988, when the right-of-way between these two points was acquired by land developer Gerald Turco from Conrail. Turco had also acquired most of the Lackawanna Cut-Off as part of the same deal. Conrail removed the tracks south of Sparta Junction; however, the section north of that point was already being considered by the New York, Susquehanna & Western (NYS&W) as part of a combined regional freight route with Norfolk Southern Railway (NS). The line from Warwick to Campbell Hall, New York is currently leased to the Middletown and New Jersey Railroad.
  In New Jersey, the NYS&W owns the L&HR line north of Sparta to the state line.  North of the state line, it is owned by NS which had acquired the line during the breakup of Conrail. Both portions of the line are leased to and operated by the Middletown and New Jersey Railroad.
caption: The L&HR running under the abandoned Lackawanna Cut-Off near Tranquility, New Jersey, circa 1989. By this point, the L&HR line had been abandoned, and trackage removal occurred when land ownership transferred from Conrail to land developer Gerard Turco
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